Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday March 07, 2013 @05:30AM
from the time-to-sue dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Court of Appeal judgement released today has ruled in favor of Kim Dotcom and will let him sue the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) alongside New Zealand Police. During the High Court case, it emerged that the GCSB had been illegally spying on Dotcom prior to the raid on his Coatesville mansion, on behalf of the FBI, who now wants the Megaupload millionaire extradited to face trial in the US over copyright infringements."

When did we start to allow police forces in Western countries start to behave like militias?

It's been that way for over almost a decade now.

DHS just dropped ~$100 million on a bunch of APCs, school Districts are buying assault weapons for their on-campus police forces and the LAPD has been known to send out swat team members to deal with parking tickets.

The bottom line is: the police have realized that they can practically guarantee they get to go home at the end of the day if they treat every interaction like a military engagement and utilize overwhelming force to suppress their enemy. The fact that innocent people will get murdered in their zeal of officer-safety-at-all-costs doesn't even enter their thought process.

I'd like to say that unlike most of you (most of you who post, anyway), I am, in a broad brush "against" mega. The test of copyright infringement in all countries in not a simple yes/no, but rather depends on things like intent, amount of material involved, for profitness, etc. And, when put against such tests, it is clear that megaupload's entire business model was as a facilitator of copyright infringing materials. I don't think there's any legitimate claim for him to be a "common carrier" as an impartial ISP. I agree with the takedown of his site and the seizure of his ill-gotten gains.

HOWEVER

If you read the wiki page on mega, specifically the "basis of indictment" bullet points, what strikes me is this: the exact same list can easily be levied against youtube, which I content is also a business, like megaupload, fundamentally built upon copyright infringement. YouTube is slightly more clever in that they attract non-infringing users to better mask their infringing activities, but still fundamentally the vast bulk of youtube advertising dollars come from showing copyright infringing content. Like megaupload, it has as kiddy-pron filter that works and yet while the same filter could be trivially tweaked or built upon to block at least a good portion of blatantly infringing content, it is not. Furthermore, both youtube and mega technically claim to be DMCA-takedown compliant, but both make legitimate rightsholders go through the maximal numbers of hoops to submit claims AND have trivial mechanisms for replacement of taken-down content (in mega's case, the 'link' system, in youtube's case, users just create another logon and re-upload).

So, if there's one thing REALLY wrong with this case, it's not relatively small prosecutorial oversteps in going after mega. rather, it's the unequalness where mega was procecuted but youtube allows to steam on. do a youtube search for 'full movie' to see how bad it is. we all know that we can find more or less whatever we want on youtube, plus or minus a few recent items from popular/current shows where the rightsholders actively police youtube (like the latest family guy episodes).

in all cases, it is the creators of content, the very people that we should protect the most, that get screwed.

Use a bit of empiricism to figure it out, you fucking prick. Many departments in the US now allow (and even mandate) that officers have either an AR-15 or full blown M-16 in the trunk of their car. As the anti-gun lobby has been so eager to point out to 2nd Amendment supporters: those are weapons of war meant for killing large volumes of people quickly and efficiently.

The government has basically ruined their ability and right to prosecute him by illegal and ridiculous behaviour. Is he a bad guy? probably. Does he deserve to have his basic freedoms respected? Ya, just like anyone else.

Like other cases where a person's legal rights are infringed by investigators (and prosecutors), dotcom deserves to go free and the evidence used against him stricken. That's the only way to ensure that the same tactics won't be used again and again against people.

Kim Dotcom is no hero, but the government is definitely the villain of the piece, and their actions have led to Kim Dotcom's credibility (ha!) in this case.

But that is not why the OP was calling NZ western. He/she did it because it has a similar culture to the US, as if that makes it a better country in terms of human rights.

There was a time when it did mean that. Ask your grandparents or your oldest living relative about that, maybe they will be old enough to remember. It was definitely a long time ago. Now we in the "Western nations" do the very same things we used to look down on "Communist" countries for doing. That includes things like imprisonment without trial, secret FISA courts, summary executions of citizens, etc.

in all cases, it is the creators of content, the very people that we should protect the most, that get screwed.

Well no. In all cases, it is The People, the people that we should protect equally, that get screwed. If you're the little guy, you can't afford to wage war over "intellectual property". These laws are there to benefit corporations.

The first copyright law of which I'm aware stated "all books passing through this port must be submitted for copying", not "thou shalt not make copies". That kind of copyright was about increasing human knowledge. The kind we have now is about rent-seeking.